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  “They journeyed to the strand. And there they found a ship awaiting them, a vessel that rode low in the water, though nothing filled it but ghostly voices. It was the ship that carried the dead to the uttermost west.

  “Vallart’s courage forsook him, and he could not go onward. Chal gave him the embrace of a king and left him, boarded the ship of doom. Bereft, Vallart stood on the shore of his homeland and watched as his prince set sail, the gray ship set sail, gone in the fog as if it had never been, and only the echo of his comrade’s farewell remained to him. Then Vallart followed his prince—and walked into the sea.

  “He traveled himself the spirit ways to the Mountains of Doom, the place where the king of death made her dwelling. And coming there not long after Chal had, he found that his prince had been taken captive by that ruler and was being put to torture in the prison pit of that place. Vallart in his spirit form slipped through the prison walls and went to him. And embracing the friend who had come to him against all expectation, Chal felt a power fill him that was greater than the power of death herself. It was the power of the oldest deity, the power of love. And by that mighty power he rose up and burst his bonds, and by that power and the sorcery he had learned at the hands of his tormentor, he sank the Moutains of Doom beneath the sea.”

  I grew aware, by a sense I cannot explain, a sort of presence in my mind, that Kor had drawn near. He was standing just outside the door, listening, as no servant of that place would have dared to stand and listen. I felt as sure of his whereness as if I had turned to see him, and my own sureness frightened me so that I paused in the telling of the tale.

  Kor! Stop that!

  Stop what?

  Never mind. Nothing. Mindspeak had steadied me. I went on.

  “Chal and Vallart sailed back to their homeland, back to the land of the living. Many more times they thwarted death, the two of them, and Vallart is said to have brought Chal back from death at least one time more. So many times they refused to die, folk say that in some way they are living yet, and yet together.”

  Mahela startled me by laughing merrily. “What nonsense!” she cried. “I have no need of ships to bring the dead to me. And the peaks you call the Mountains of Doom have always stood beneath the sea.”

  “Is there no truth to the tale, then?” I asked her levelly.

  “You mortals, how you twist truth to suit your fancies!” Her amusement had not abated. “But yes, some truth. They came here, in a ship of their own. They contested with me. But they never sailed away. You are sitting in the hold of their vessel.”

  With a shock and a feeling as if the rats of despair gnawed at my gut, I realized what Mahela’s dwelling was. The tall, bare trees, masts for sails. The platform where her throne stood, a deck. I, who had never seen these things, only heard Tassida tell of them, I had not guessed before.

  “They are here, then?” I asked softly, trying to hold off the despair.

  With a careless laugh Mahela said, “Not here. Utterly dead, but not here.”

  And at once the rats of despair ran away from me as if they had never been, for I knew the truth. If she had been at all able to constrain Chal and Vallart, she would have kept them by her, pets for the gloating over. They had bested her.

  “They lived,” I said.

  Careful, Dan! Do not anger her!

  It was Kor, warning me like inwit. But I spoke on, not heeding him, for a thought had hold of me. “In a sense they yet live. I have seen them.”

  I felt Kor’s questioning surprise. And as for Mahela, all laughter left her. “Where?” she demanded.

  “On black water. Amid the shadows of stars.”

  “You fool,” she stormed at me, shooting to her feet, and in her fury I sensed a certainty: it was Chal and Vallart whom Kor and I had seen at the pool of vision. Perhaps even their swords that had come to us there. And Kor sensed it as certainly as I did, for I could feel it in him, the sureness, the wonder.

  Worth her wrath, I mindspoke him rapidly, to find out.

  I hope. Dan, tell her no more—we must not betray them!

  “They are dead!” Mahela shrieked.

  “Truly they must be, my lady, if you say so.” Hugging my knowledge to my heart, I no longer cared to contest her. “Who should know better than you? I am indeed a fool, as I have many times been told. I am a dreamer, a teller of tales. It is seldom enough that I know the ways of truth.”

  Glowering, she slowly seated herself. “Tell another tale,” she snapped.

  I looked into leaping green flames and spoke. “You have heard the tale of the boyhood of Sakeema?”

  “No,” she said curtly, “I have not.”

  So I told it.

  “He was reared by the deer, in the mountains, my folk say. And the Herders say by red wolves, on the arid plains. No matter, for the tale is much the same. There came a time, when he was perhaps eight or ten and nearly of an age to take a name, when he had to leave the creatures and learn the ways of men. So he kissed his foster parents on the smooth fur of their cheeks and made his way down the mountains to the place where the trade trail ran.

  “Traders, banded together against robbers and Cragsmen, were making their way back from the coast with bladders of fish oil and bags of the dried wickfish that sputter and blaze when a flame sets whem alight. And one night of the new moon, as they camped by the trail, crouched around their fires, a naked boy came out of the forest and set their pack ponies and riding ponies loose by merely touching the hobbles and tethers. For in the experience of Sakeema, creatures had ever been free, not bound.

  “The traders, seeing what was happening just as it was too late to prevent it, were filled with fury. The more sensible men and women among them set themselves to catching the straying ponies, but the more muddleheaded seized the boy and commenced to beat him. This also was a new experience to Sakeema. He had known pain enough, learning to leap from crag to crag like the deer without falling, but he had never felt pain inflicted in anger. After musing upon it for a few moments, he decided it was of no worth, and he turned aside the sticks and fists with his small, brown hands.

  “After that, though they called him halfwit, not yet ready to admit that he was divine, the traders were afraid of him and gave him blankets and food. Nor was there any difficulty about the ponies, for like all creatures they wished to be with Sakeema, and gathered around him in the night. Within a few days the traders had learned that the ponies would follow him wherever he went, unled. Therefore they were kind to him so that he would lead the ponies rightly. For his own part, seeing that the people he was with wore clothing, Sakeema accepted a gift of a breeching and submitted to having it girded upon him.

  “After the traders had returned to the tribe, the half-wild boy they brought with them was given over to the keeping of the king and his household, as was honorable. For the king, having the most, must therefore give the most, and ought ever to be grateful for occasion to be generous. In the king’s tent, Sakeema was made much of, shielded and petted by men and women alike, for he was deemed a wantwit, one to be pitied. Though within a season he learned sensible speech, still no one ever struck him or shouted at him when he did untoward things, for he seemed an innocent.

  “But the king’s children, when they quarreled or disobeyed, were scolded and sometimes beaten. Among them was a boy of ten summers, perhaps Sakeema’s age, and Sakeema thought of him as a brother. And the king was often severe with this boy, for he was a bold lad and likely would someday be king in his turn.

  “One day, when the king’s son had failed to heed the signals of the hunt and had rushed too soon toward the deer, losing his people much meat by his impatience, the king, his father, took him away into the forest to be lashed, and Sakeema followed. ‘How is it,’ Sakeema asked the king, ‘that you punish my brother, but you never punish me?’

  “The king was astonished. ‘You complain,’ he exclaimed, ‘because I treat you kindly? Open up your eyes and be glad you are not punished. Few are so fortunate.’ T
hough the king himself hardly knew why it was that he could not be angry at Sakeema.

  “‘It causes me no joy,’ Sakeema said, ‘to hear my brother’s cries.’

  “‘Then go where you need not hear,’ said the king, and still he could not be angry at Sakeema.

  “And still Sakeema did not go away. ‘I tell you,’ he said to the king, ‘far rather would I take those blows upon my own body, than know that they are struck upon my brother.’”

  Telling the tale, gazing into the green flames, I seemed to see there the young Sakeema’s face, and it was Kor’s. He had once said to me something very much like Sakeema’s words. And even as I remembered, I felt the startled leap of his mind.

  Dan—where did you get this story? I have never heard it before.

  In the flames, I told him. Call it vision, for I felt sure it was true. Even Mahela sat still as the hills of my homeland for the telling.

  “The king looked from Sakeema to his son, and from his son to Sakeema, and took many breaths, for he had wisdom enough to sense a fateful moment. But he had not quite sufficient wisdom to accede to the mercy of a god.

  “‘My son has done wrong,’ the king said finally, ‘and he must bear the blows that follow. Such is the rule of my tribe.’ Then, as the lash fell, Sakeema went away.

  “He went wholly away from the king, the king’s tent, and the tribe. For he knew then that he was one whose understanding lay outside the rules of that tribe, and he would not stay there. He wandered, and sojourned with many tribes, learning their speech and their customs, but he never took a name. And he found few folk who understood the freedom of a running deer or the meaning of mercy, even for a moment. Many he found whose thoughts tended only toward war.

  “When he grew to be a man, stopping spearflight with the power of his hands, he ended war—for a time. But that is another tale. Folk gave him the name he had never taken for himself, Sakeema, he-whom-all-we-seek, and he taught the tribes a single speech, uniting them for a time, until the kings turned against him—but that is another tale.

  “He died taking upon himself the punishment that rightly belonged to the woman who called herself his mother. And because justice unsoftened by mercy begets all that is merciless: one of the kings who watched as he was killed was the one whom he had called brother. Whose back he had wished to save from the lash.”

  I ended the tale there, sat and stared into the fire Mahela had made me. Behind me I felt Kor’s silent protest—why had I not brought Sakeema back from the dead? Beside me, after a silent moment, Mahela stirred, and the green flames leaped lower, then went out. The room filled up with its hard, yellow-green light again. I stood and faced the goddess.

  “I am glad you have not said that Sakeema sleeps and shall come again,” she told me. “He is dead.”

  I ducked my head to hide the gleam that needs must come into my eyes, though I stopped my smile before it reached my lips. The matter of Chal and Vallart still warmed my memory, and I would not contest her in this, at this time.

  She dismissed me with a gesture that seemed more thoughtful than callous. “Go, storyteller. I will summon you again.”

  My lowered head, I decided, would serve for bow. Bending it a bit farther, but not backing away in the manner of her lordly retainers, I turned and went. Kor joined me just beyond the doorway.

  Blood of Sakeema, Dannoc, what a tale! he mindspoke me with a sort of awe.

  Blood of Sakeema, indeed, had colored the tale at the end. I had left out some of what I had seen in the flames. Did you know they cut off his hands to curb his power? Though he had no thought of resisting them.

  Name of the god, Dan, cease. He sounded shaken. Surely you do not think Sakeema is truly dead?

  Perhaps, if I was walking beside him. I stopped myself from mindspeaking the thought, stopped my mind from pursuing it in his presence, and Kor must have felt, too, that he had ventured near perilous ground, for he asked nothing further.

  “Come,” he whispered, leading me toward the farther end of the hold, “you must see this grotesque bedchamber, if only for a moment.”

  Like the rest of the ship’s innards, the place was lit with a green and wavering sheen that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Kor guarded the door as I went in. But I scarcely looked around me, scarcely noticed the great clamshell bed, for a figure approached me out of a doorway in the opposite wall, and I dodged and crouched, heart pounding, ready to do battle. One hand snatched at my belt for the sword I no longer wore. It was Ytan.

  Ytan, in the realm of the dead? Why had my father not said so? And why would he hate me here, with the devourer gone out of him? Yet he crouched and glared at me—

  Kor entered the door and walked up beside him, placed a hand on his—my—shoulder.

  Plainly, there he stood beside Ytan, his face somehow disturbing, subtly skewed. Yet just as plainly he stood by my side, the warm weight of his hand resting on my shoulder, and I shall love him forever because he did not smile.

  I straightened slowly, my mind aghast. Never have I felt confounded in quite the same way. “Ytan,” I whispered, and then Kor understood.

  “It is your image,” he said. “In the shadowing panel.”

  “I know that now.” A tall, strong-looking fellow, straight of nose and jaw and brow. Yellow buckskins, long yellow hair floating about my head—Ytan would have braided his, I should have known that. Still, who looks for braids when the gaze is caught on the face? “Bones of my mother,” I muttered, “why do I bother to call myself Dannoc? Why not Ytan. How did I come to look so much like him!”

  “More like him in this moonstuff wall than in fact. It shadows you oddly. Leftward.”

  “You also,” I told him, feeling a warm tide of gratitude toward him.

  Uneasy in Mahela’s dwelling, I left it soon afterward and made my way back to my father’s tent. Seeing the dark cast of my face, he greeted me in silence. I sat by his doorflap and tried to tame my thoughts, but they circled like penned ponies, and I could make no sense of them. Nor could I find heart to speak to him of Ytan.

  “Did Mahela take your storytelling well?” asked my father at last.

  Wearily I said, “I am here, am I not?” He gave me a hard stare, and I smiled to see even so much spirit in him and offered him better answer. “She says she will summon me again.”

  “The next time you go to her, then, if you please her, petition her for leather to make yourself leggings and boots.”

  I scowled, for I did not consider that I was going to be in Mahela’s realm so long as to need leggings and boots, and plainly Tyonoc deemed differently. But I would not quarrel with him.

  “Is Sakeema in this place?” I asked him abruptly.

  He shrugged. “How am I to know?”

  I checked the fury that threatened to rise in me. How could he speak of Sakeema so indifferently, as if it did not matter? “If Sakeema were here, would he not call himself by the name of Sakeema?” I asked as evenly as I could manage.

  “Ah, but there are many here who call themselves by that name. Perhaps half a hundred.” Tyonoc smiled in genuine amusement, and I felt very much the fool, but I could no longer feel angry with him. He leaned back against the rise of stone that shadowed his tent and regarded me.

  “Dannoc, my son the storyteller, now let me tell you a tale,” he said, and I looked at him curiously.

  “Not so very long a tale,” he added. “Call it the tale of Nicu.” And I narrowed my eyes at him, leaning forward to hear, for Nicu had been the foolish name my mother had called me, “little fawn,” before I took a name of my own.

  “You had not yet lived through even four seasons,” my father said with something soft and wry in his voice, “but you were then much as you ever were and yet are: bold, strong, and always rushing headlong into trouble. We joked that your many falls must have thickened your skull. You were standing and trying to walk before you had been with us much more than half a year, and before you well knew how to walk you were trying to ru
n.

  “Your mother and I had gone our own way apart from the tribe for a while, for that was a time when everything seemed to go against me, my luck was bad. Tyee and Ytan were sick with the swelling fever. Your mother tended them and you. And when I went out to try to bring in meat for the five of us, my arrow flew awry and I shot a nursing deer.”

  It was abomination to shoot a hind with a fawn. I winced in sympathy for my father.

  “She was not dead, the hind. She staggered away with the arrow in her shoulder, and I could only hope she would yet be well. Then, to try to make things less wrong, I went and found the deer calf—her bleat had drawn it out of the thicket, it stood dazed—a little, long-legged, dappled thing. I took it up in my arms and bore it back to the tent for Wyonet to nurse along with the rest of you.

  “And you, less than a year of age, you came stumbling to meet me, with a gait like a duck’s, trying to run and falling on your chin and getting up again, and you seized at the fawn as if to embrace it like a brother. I tried to prevent you, but then I saw that the little creature was not afraid of you. Then and thereafter it curled up against you for warmth and comfort, and you treated it more kindly than I would have thought likely of any child so small. And it slept with you at night in your bed.

  “Wyonet fed it with her own milk, as she did you, and sometimes the two of you nursed side by side, one at each of her fair white breasts.” Tyonoc’s voice faltered, and I could see that it cost him something, the telling of the tale, but he kept on. “And sometimes you and your fawn brother gamboled and played together, you in your lumpish baby way and it on its long, slim legs. It stayed with us a cycle of the moon, and then its mother came and took it back.